God's Delight In Zion's Citizens

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Psalm 87:1-4

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I've titled this sermon, God's Delight in Zion Citizens. Or you can all say, God's Delight in Heaven Citizens.
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But I chose to stick with Zion here. I think I might have sent it in the bulletin wrong. If you followed the news recently, you may have noticed that the process by which a person becomes a
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US citizen has been a popular topic in the past year or two years. Radio, newspapers, podcasts, and TV seem to be obsessed with answering the question of the hour.
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What makes a person an American? If you survey the world, you will find two common standards that are used to grant citizenship.
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There's two. The first standard is the right of soil, or the Latin phrase for that is jus soli.
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So that means, are you born in the country? That's America's standard. If you are born here, you are a citizen. That's our country's primary metric for establishing citizenship.
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The vast majority of North and South America, we use this standard. If you are born here, you're a citizen. The new world, as it was termed by the early explorers, was not obsessed with titles of nobility, not obsessed with royal lineage.
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Land was possessed by those who settled it, and citizenship was given out democratically to all new children.
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Now, if we return to Europe, or the old world, we see there that most countries employ a very different metric for determining what a citizen is.
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Europe uses a standard called jus sanguinis, or the right of blood. That is the predominant standard for Europe, Africa, and much of Asia.
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The right of blood means that citizenship automatically passes from parents to children, then onto their grandchildren.
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So we see two separate standards here. These countries may allow a limited number of new babies to become citizens, but this is an exception to the general rule.
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Most of these countries are very ethnically homogenous, because as you see, they say they pass it down by a family. Here in America, we're not like that.
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If you're born here, you are an American. That's our standard. Since most of these countries were governed for hundreds of years by hereditary monarchies, it's very clear to see why they fall into this.
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They've had the same people ruling them for hundreds of years. Naturally, they say citizenship comes down to your family. The Bible has many genealogical lists.
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If you read the Bible, you'll see those very quickly. Old Testament Israel, they prefer blood over soil as a mark of Jewish ancestry.
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Actually, if you look at Jewish culture, your Jewish heritage is matrilineal, which means that it's determined by your mom.
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You're not a Jew just because your father's a Jew. You're a Jew if your mother's a Jew and it passes down onto you. As New Testament Christians, we don't inherit the right to heaven by being born to a
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Christian family or being born in a certain country. Neither of those standards apply. Unregenerate Jews that live in the modern nation of Israel, they have no more right to God's covenant promises of redemption than a
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South Pacific Islander. Like people that are born in Israel, if they don't accept Jesus as their
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Messiah, they're worse off than a person that never heard the gospel. They're just as lost. There's no special privilege to being born a
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Jew if you're not trusting Jesus as a Messiah. Our inheritance in heaven occurs as adoption of sons into God's everlasting covenant of redemption.
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Theologians use the word for covenant of redemption, pactum salutis. In eternity past, the Trinity decided they were going to save a certain amount of people and that was the covenant that was made.
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So our standard is not the right of blood. Our standard is not the right of soil. Actually, I would propose our standard is jus adoptio or the right of adoption because we are adopted into God's covenant.
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We are not born into it. And we don't get it by being born there or born into it. In that vein, please turn with me to Psalm 87.
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In Psalm 87 today, we're gonna consider what is
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Christian citizenship? What is it? How does it apply to us? I'll be reading the first four verses of the text.
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I'll focus on this today. And I'll be reading out of the New King James Version. Please turn to Psalm 87 with me.
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His foundation is in the holy mountains. The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob.
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Glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God, Selah. I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon to those who know me.
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Behold, O Philistia and Tyre with Ethiopia. This one was born there.
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Please bow your head and pray with me. Dear Lord, we thank you for this day. Lord, I'm not...
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Our Lord, I pray that you would keep me, Lord, from saying anything that's not in accordance with your word. Lord, I pray that your word would do the speaking and that all of us, including myself, would learn from your word, what it means to be adopted and born as a citizen of Zion.
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We thank you for this great privilege, Lord, the greatest country of the citizenship can't compare to the citizenship we have in heaven.
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We pray that we would never forget that and we would always live, first and foremost, as citizens of heaven. Christ's name. Amen. For the first section of my exposition,
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I like to consider the first three verses of this chapter. Sometimes when you divide verses up, you try to say .123,
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it'll be two verses each, but the longer I looked at this, the first three verses really, to me, form a unit. The first three verses
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I'm gonna put under the heading God's dwelling or God with us. And then once that's done, we'll move on to verse four.
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And for verse four, we will see my second point, which is the
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Christian's home or God for us. So my very first point is God's dwelling or God with us.
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Consider how important commercial buildings or homes are to our economy or our world. They're very important.
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We take buildings for granted, but we can't have life without them. Often when you look at a different society, how do you deem a society to be advanced or primitive?
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By their buildings. This society has advanced buildings. This society has simple things. That's how you judge how advanced a society is.
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We use buildings to do many things. They provide shelter for us. They facilitate buying and selling.
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We cook our food. We enact our laws in a building. We watch sporting events. We manufacture cars.
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We worship God in a building, as we're doing today. And there's many other things. Nomadic societies, mainly societies that wander around and have no fixed place, they are often slaves to the weather.
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They just can't do things. They don't have fixed buildings. So if the weather's blowing, they can take their tents down and move on. But we have buildings and the weather doesn't affect us anymore.
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Thanks to our buildings, most segments of modern society, we have no such problem. How do people define themselves?
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What do you use? A lot of times people define themselves with where they go to church, what they do, and where they live.
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That is a big component of how modern Americans define themselves. I live in Dallas. I live in Hyrum.
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Or I live in the country or the city. Culture and society are elevated from merely subsisting to thriving by these structures.
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You know, you can survive in a tent, but you can thrive in a house. And that's why when people are displaced or like in Charlotte where they have, not
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Charlotte, sorry, Asheville, where the flooding came, tents, I was talking with Brother Mike when he came last time, tents can provide a temporary dwelling, but they're really not the same as the house.
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You don't have indoor plumbing. You don't have all the things that we need to make us thrive in life. We cannot have a stable world without buildings and buildings cannot exist without a foundation.
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Now, a foundation, that's very unglamorous and it's an afterthought to most people in our world.
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Most of us probably haven't thought of a foundation. Maybe Keith has. I know Keith works in contracting, but most of us don't.
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Generally, you only notice foundations when what? When they start cracking. When they crack or the buildings start shifting, then you're like, oops, something's wrong with the foundation.
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But as long as the foundation is stable, no one thinks about it. Some buildings have even become famous due to their faulty foundations.
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Perhaps think of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The foundation of that building was not big enough to support the weight. It leans. That's a very popular tourist attraction.
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So there's an example of something that became popular based on a faulty foundation. If we move from the secular to the sacred realm, we know the church's foundation is
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Jesus Christ. That is the ultimate foundation of the church. Let's read what 1 Corinthians 3, verse 11 says.
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1 Corinthians 3, 11 says, for no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is
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Jesus Christ. So you can attempt to lay another foundation, but it will not survive. The only true foundation for a
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Christian is Christ or the world. Notice that Paul does not simply say other foundations are weak or temporal, right?
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Instead, he insists that no can be even laid. That's not the finished work of Christ. There is no foundation that will survive into eternity if it's not laid on Christ's work.
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In Jesus's parable of two houses, we did see the one with the sandy foundation. It survived the short time before the storm came through.
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So there was a short time of period where it looked like it was stable. But when Jesus is speaking in this parable about the difference between the saved and the lost, while Paul was talking about, in 1
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Corinthians 3, about the Christian spiritual works. In other words, I think Jesus was talking about justification and Paul was talking about sanctification.
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How many buyers would want a state -of -the -art, multimillion -dollar mansion if the foundation was crumbling?
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You'd put more money into that than you would get out of it. Actually, most people prefer a modest dwelling with a solid foundation because you know you're not gonna have to worry about it.
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Those only God's, only faith in Christ's finished work can justify you in the sight of God. If your justification is based on your own works, you will be swept away in the final day, just like the house with the sand foundation was swept away in the storm and come.
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However, for those whose foundation is in Christ, their works will be tested to examine their quality.
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So there will be a foundation check. Those who pursued their sanctification out of a sincere love for Christ will receive additional rewards.
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That is a doctrine too we see in the Bible. So if we go back to 1 Corinthians 3, and we skip down past 12, we read verses 13 through 15.
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It says, each one's work will become clear, for the day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire, and fire will test each one's work of what sort it is.
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If anyone's work has be as built on it endures, he will receive reward. If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved yet as through fire.
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So the foundation is Christ, but you lay on top of Christ a building of your sanctified works, and you want something that doesn't burn up.
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As Christians, we want to have things we can present and lay down at Christ's feet because of what he's done for us.
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Our verse says, if you start in verse one, it says, God's foundation is in the holy mountains.
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Matthew Henry and Matthew Poole believe that this first clause fits better as the psalm's title in the opening sentence.
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Some commentators believe that, if you look at it, it says a psalm of the son of Korah. They believe that his foundation of the holy mountains is actually part of the title and not part of the verse.
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Either way, when you open with his foundation, it is kind of abrupt, and it is kind of lacking some context because normally you start with the subject.
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We have his here, but it doesn't, you know, it's like, who are we talking about here?
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It almost seems as if the author has responded to a general mood that he senses among his countrymen.
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He knows how they feel, therefore he writes, his foundation is in the holy mountains. Both commentators believe, and history as well says, this song was written after the
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Israelites returned from the Babylonian captivity, and they were rebuilding the temple. Discouragement and sadness would be constant enemies as the
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Israelites worked to rebuild their destroyed city. They would look and say, look at this destruction. How are we ever gonna make it back to what it was before?
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And this was written to lift their spirits and remind them that God is still with them.
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Even if the glory of Jerusalem is gone and the temple has been raised to the ground, God is still with them.
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God never left them. Foundation, of course, as we know this, it's metaphorical language because God is a spirit.
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God is not a building. However, we are humans, and in order to understand God, we have to use words.
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And God uses the medium of human words to relate truth concerning his character to us.
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Let's move on to the second clause. Here it says his foundation is in the holy mountains.
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The city of Jerusalem, for all you know, was built on top of a mountain. Whether you were coming to Jerusalem from the north, from Galilee, or you were coming up from Judea in the south, you could say truth leave your way, we are going up to Jerusalem because the elevation was up.
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It was higher than everything else. Additionally, I won't stop there, the temple of God was situated on the tallest bluff in all of Jerusalem.
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So one of the tallest bluffs, Mount Moriah, the temple was up there. So you were literally going up to Jerusalem, and then you were literally and metaphorically going up to the temple as well.
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In the time of Abraham, it was called Mount Moriah, and then after Abraham died and the
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Jews settled there, it was called the Temple Mount. When you put the temple on the highest point in the city, that's an unforgettable reminder to all the
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Jews of their creaturely status. We live down here in the city, God lives up there in the temple, he lives above us.
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Therefore, if you were a pilgrim going to Jerusalem, you would both be literally going up and metaphorically traveling up to meet
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God too, because God is exalted above us and we're also going up a hill. I don't know if you ever paid attention, but a lot of the
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Psalms in your Bible do contain, not all, but a lot of them contain titles. And if you look at ours, it says,
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A Song of Ascents. There's Psalms 120 through 134.
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I don't know if all of them, but a good amount of them, they're all written down as Psalms of Ascents. So these Psalms were designed to be sung as worshipers journeyed up to the temple.
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These songs were designed to get their heart in a frame to worship God. When we come to church, we sing songs to prepare our hearts, to stir the oil up, to light the fire so that our hearts are prepared to worship
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God. This is exactly what the Jews did. When they sang this song as they went up to Jerusalem, this song was preparing them to worship
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God. Although we are separated from the Jews by time, language, and culture, we do use songs and Psalms in a very similar way.
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A lot of people kneel to pray, and a lot of people, that helps them align their hearts with a physical posture. If they kneel to pray, they can feel humped, they can feel like they're submitting to God's will.
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You don't have to kneel to pray. You can do, you know, you can stand. There's various things in the Bible, but you see, again, a lot of times, you put the posture, it comes before the heart.
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Similarly, when we sing, it gladdens the heart, and it puts us in a joyous state so that we can better worship our Heavenly Father.
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I like what Psalm 95 says here. Psalm 95, one through two says, it says, come, let us sing to the
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Lord. Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving.
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Let us shout joyfully to him with Psalms of praise. So the Psalms are designed to lift our hearts up to God and cause us to want to praise him.
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Now, please return with me to Psalm 87. The noun mountain is modified by the adjective holy.
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This is no ordinary mountain, for the presence of God dwells there. So it's not just a mountain.
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You can, anyone can go to a mountain, a non -believer can climb a mountain, but this is a holy mountain. Throughout the
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Old Testament, we see that God chooses various mountains to reveal himself and make his will known to the
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Israelites. Where did Noah's Ark land? Noah's Ark landed on Mount Ararat. The law was given at Mount Sinai or Mount Horeb.
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That's another name that was given to it. Blessings and cursings, or blessings and curses rather, were pronounced from Mount Gerizim and who could forget
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Elijah and his famous contest with Baal's prophets on Mount Carmel. However, these mountains, although they were all special, none of them were selected as the permanent residence of God on earth.
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Mount Moriah was. Like the nations around Israel, all of these mountains received a little light, but Mount Moriah received the most light because Mount Moriah is where God dwelt.
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God chose Mount Moriah as his special dwelling place in the time of ancient
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Israel. It goes without saying that God's dwelling, it's no longer on the
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Temple Mount. There's a Muslim mosque there, the Dome of the Rock. God's not dwelling in the Dome of the Rock. That's a synagogue to Satan.
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And Judaism is defeated too. They don't have a temple either, but Judaism may be defeated. God is not defeated.
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God is still alive and he dwells in the hearts of every person. We can, if you look at Isaiah, actually, without even leaving the
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Old Testament, we can see this. Let's look at Isaiah 57 and let's read verse 15. One of my favorite verses in Isaiah.
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I love Isaiah, but this one's probably close to the top of my list. For thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy.
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I dwell in a high and holy place and with him who has a contrite and a humble spirit to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the hearts of the contrite one.
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So who does God dwell with today? Those who are contrite and those who are humble. We, as God's saints, and if you trust in Christ, you are all
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God's saints, we are his new temples on this earth. In 70 AD, when Titus came through and the son of the emperor
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Vespasian and he destroyed the temple, he destroyed Judaism. They have no religion. They go up to the wailing wall and worship at a remnant of the foundation of the temple.
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But we have no temple for them. Think about this. If the Jewish people don't have a temple, they don't have incense, they don't have blood offerings, they don't have
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Levitical priesthood, they have a loss of religious identity. What does it mean to be a Jew without the temple? You know,
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John MacArthur said this when we went to see him in G3 of 2021, he said, the Jewish religion is primarily centered around their ancestors.
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They worship their ancestors because that's all they have left. However, as Christians, we carry the presence of God in our breasts.
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We don't need a temple because God dwells inside of us. Every Christian, all of you are living temples of God.
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Our righteous deeds, our priestly service, our prayers, our fragrant incense, our evangelism transmits
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God's warnings that the prophet does and our self -denial is living testimony to the cross.
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All of these things are. The Aaronic priesthood has passed into history and the new covenant reveals that all believers have the same access to God.
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There is no need, you don't need a high priest. You don't need a priest. We have Jesus, we go directly to him. Speaking to Jewish churches,
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Peter reminds them of this in 1 Peter 2 .9. He says, but you are a chosen generation. You are a royal priesthood.
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You are a holy nation. You are his own special people that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
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So Peter's reminding the Jews, you are the temple. You are the holy priesthood. You have no need for these shadows. I don't know if many of you have heard of Ignatius, he was a church father.
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He lived in Antioch in the first century. One of the most important things to know about Ignatius was he was discipled directly by the apostle
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John himself. So he came directly from Jesus, John, Ignatius. When Trajan, the emperor, came to Antioch in 107, he said,
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I'm gonna persecute or kill anyone that refuses to sacrifice to the Roman gods. Ignatius was put on trial because Ignatius said,
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I will not sacrifice the Roman gods. He said, I already have God in my breast. I don't sacrifice to God because God lives inside of me.
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Those aren't real gods. God is here, those temples are false. And he fearlessly did this. The word that he used was theophorous or God -bearer.
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We are all God -bearers. If you are a Christian, you are a God -bearer because Christ lives in you.
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And this gospel truth, it's not just for church fathers. It's not just for Ignatius. It's not just for Tertullian.
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It's not just for Augustine. This gospel truth is for everyone that loves Christ. God lives inside of you.
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You know, the Bible states very clearly that we possess the same level of sainthood as Ignatius.
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Even though the Roman Catholic church works hard to hide that fact. They wanna have, these people are saints. We've made this person a saint.
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No, if you believe in Christ, all of you are saints. Every one of us is a saint. When Paul writes the
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Galatians in Galatians 1 .27, he says, he reinforces this truth. He said, to them,
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God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles. What are the riches of his glory?
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Christ in you, the hope of glory. So Christ lives inside of us. As I consider the phrase, the holy mountains, a thought did occur to me.
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You know, am I overstraining this text to find a messianic prophecy? However, the more I tried to dismiss the thought, the more persistent
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I think it actually became. Mountains are God's bridges between earth and sky.
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Unregenerate men know this well. If you go back to the Tower of Babel in the Old Testament, what were they gonna do? We're gonna build a tower that reaches heaven to go up to God.
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So they weren't gonna build a mountain, they were gonna build an artificial mountain to go up there. God rejected this work of their hands and he punished their disobedience by confusing their language.
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God rejected them. Thus, they were scattered all over the world. And this is why we have different languages as well.
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Many men have summited the highest mountains in our world. Everest, people have gone up it. However, no man has ever or can ever be perfectly holy.
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Climbing to the top of Everest and staring at the sky is the closest that many people ever get to heaven.
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I think a lot of them do. There's this yearning in their heart to be close to God. They think if I climb the top of Everest, I'll be close to God. That's not being close to God.
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We don't even know where heaven is. I mean, it could be up or it could be down. But being close to God means being like God, being holy like he is holy.
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And this is why we need a mediator. Jesus is the perfect mountain that bridged the gap to bring us to Christ.
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Jesus is that mountain. Becoming a resident of this world, he took on human nature. Yet, even though he took on human nature, he still retained his holy nature as God in one distinct person.
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He's not two persons. He's one person with two natures. Where mountains fall short, Christ succeeds.
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Christ is not a mere pile of rock, but Christ is a living bridge to God who actively intercedes for us every single day.
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Our Savior's mediation, when he's at the throne of God, interceding for Keith or interceding for Liz or interceding for Linda, he's not, that is an active part of his redemption.
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His redemption didn't stop when he died on the cross. His redemption continues every single day when he asked the
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Father to forgive us, his redemption is continuing. We are saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved when we are glorified.
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We are not like the Jews. We don't wail at the foundation of Herod's temple. That's foolishness. What can those bricks and mud do for you?
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How can we mourn? Our Messiah is alive. He's seated at the right hand of God, the Father.
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They mourn for fragments of a once glorious temple. We rejoice in the wounds of an always glorified
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Savior. You can have your little fragment of a temple. We have a mediator in heaven who still has nail prints in his hands, and that's proof of how much he loves us.
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Thomas Watson writes this. He said, grace precedes glory as the morning star ushers in the sun.
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And our sufferings now, they produce Christian graces. You will not have Christian graces without suffering.
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You must suffer. If Christ suffered to be exalted, we are not going to skip through it.
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We are gonna suffer as well. But suffering leads to glory. We see more of this hope in, and these glory, what's the glory that we revealed in us?
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The one day we will be in heaven with the Lord, and we will be perfect. If we go to verse two, we will see more of this hope in verse two.
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Verse two says, the Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob.
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In this verse, we see God, he singles out Zion as his special treasure among all the cities of Israel.
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The Old Testament usage of this term varies. Sometimes Zion is referring to the Temple Mount. Sometimes it's applied more broadly to the entire city of Jerusalem.
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If you look at first, I'm sorry, second Samuel 5, seven, we see it being applied in this manner. It says, nevertheless,
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David took the stronghold of Zion. And then in parentheses, we have, that is the city of David, right?
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So it says David took the whole city. This verse is interesting because it tells us something. The term
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Zion actually predates the Davidic kingdom. So Zion was the name before David took over Jerusalem.
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The name was given by the Jebusites. The Jebusites were the former occupants of that mountain.
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If we compute the time from the conquest of Canaan until the life of David, we get 250 to 400 years.
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So 250 to 400 years before David came on the scene, that was being called Zion. This Canaanite subgroup was still flourishing in the promised land centuries after God had commanded
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Israel to completely drive them out. God said, drive the people out. 400 years after the end of the promised land, the
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Jebusites still had a mount in Zion. This historical footnote, I think is a great metaphor for the process of our sanctification.
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Even though our foundation is found in Christ and we are headed toward the heavenly of Zion, we must still contend with pockets of resistance in our soul.
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You know this as much as well as I do. You're gonna have remaining sin, you're gonna fight. Every day on this earth as a
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Christian is a fight, it is. And what does fighting with these sins do? It makes us yearn for heaven.
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It strengthens our faith. And it encourages our Christian brothers and sisters in their walk.
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It really is an encouragement. When I see my fellow brothers, sisters in Christ mortifying their sins, it's an encouragement to me to put my sins to death as well.
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So remember, your sanctification isn't just for God and for you, it's for everyone else around you as well. God delights in many things, but I can say this for sure.
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He delights in watching his redeemed crush the necks of their cherished lusts with feet that are now walking in gospel paths.
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Fortifications in our soul that once protected allies of the devil, now they become ramparts of righteousness to send the gospel forth.
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Paul the apostle went from religious terrorists to martyr once he was conquered by Christ. Those very same guns that were trained on the
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Christians were trained on the devil afterwards. The devil turned, what did the devil do in the garden?
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The devil turned the crown of God's creation against the Lord and against God, the whole
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Trinity. Should we not repay the serpent of old and kind? Should we not conquer our sin and turn our hearts against him?
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Only Jesus can crush the devil's head, but the saints of us, we do have a duty to slay the serpent's lusts wherever they are found in our souls.
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Our crown is imperishable, therefore our fight must be vigorous. There is no slacking in this fight.
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We must be persistent about fighting for the truth. God's love for the saints is different from this general love to the world, and that's why
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I'm gonna go back to our text. We'll see this if we pick back up in verse 2b. 2b says, he loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob.
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The second part of verse two uses an interesting designation for the nation of Israel. Through the pen of the psalmist, the
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Holy Spirit uses the words dwellings of Jacob to describe the rest of the Jewish nation.
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As far as I know, and I did some research on this, this is the only time that this phrase appears in at least the
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New King James version of the Bible. It might appear in other ones. Matthew Henry, and I'm like, why do you use dwellings of Jacob?
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Matthew Henry had this conclusion about public versus private worship. He said, God has a love for the dwelling places of Jacob.
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He has a gracious reward for religious families and accepts their family worship. That's an essential part of being a
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Christian. However, he loves the gates of Zion better than all the other dwellings of Jacob because when it comes to competition, other things equal,
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God does prefer the public worship of the saints, the private worship, because heaven is not, you're not up in heaven worshiping in a corner.
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You're up in heaven worshiping the land together. Public worship of God is important. It's not enough to say, I privately worship
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God at home. That's great. Do you assemble the saints every Lord day? That's part of your duty as well. If you're a Christian, you must do that.
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As part of his covenant with Jacob, what did God do? He changed his name. It went from Jacob to Israel.
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And that was to demonstrate that you're no longer one man, but you are gonna be a great nation. Jacob was his given name, given by his parents.
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Israel was God's covenant name for the patriarch. God's special love was passed on Jacob, but Esau was passed over.
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Paul alludes to this in Romans 9. If you look at Romans 9 in verse 10, it says not only this, but when
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Rebekah had even conceived one man, even by her father Isaac, for the children not yet being born, nor having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand not of him who works, but of him who calls, meaning
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God. It is said to her, the older shall serve the younger. As it is written,
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Jacob, I have loved, but Esau, I have hated. Paul said that God loved
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Jacob in Romans 9. Why does the psalmist say that God loves Zion more than in the descendants of Jacob?
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That's an interesting question. Some might say it's because Zion represent heaven and God loves heaven more than earth.
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That's a good explanation. Others might say that Zion represents a more advanced stage in God's redemptive story than Israel, and God is eager.
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He really wants to reveal his salvation to all mankind. That's a better explanation. I mean, do you get more excited toward the end of a race or a football game when the arc of the movie concludes?
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I know I do. The beginning is great, but the end is exciting. Maybe I'm the only one that likes good endings, but I believe most of us have something like that.
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However, I think the best explanation for this encompasses both the chosen people and their Messiah.
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God loves the gates of Zion better because it is where he will dwell with his chosen people, whom he has redeemed through the work of his son.
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Now, we know old Israel and the old covenant, they were a mixed group like we are today. Not all of those in the dwellings of Jacob were sons and daughters of Zion.
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So there's the dwellings of Jacob, and then there's the sons and daughters of Zion. That's a smaller group. If the Old Testament teaches us anything, if you read the
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Old Testament through, you'll really see very quickly, there is a lot of chaff and very little wheat, even among God's chosen nation,
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God's special nation who he poured his love on. He gave him the Pentateuch, he gave him his prophets, and there was a lot of chaff.
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There still was. A lot of people didn't believe in Christ. The dwellings of Jacob represent a specific geographic location where the
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Hebrews lives. The question I put to you today is, is God's church that small? Is it just the dwellings of Jacob?
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No, it's not. Because if God's church were just the dwellings of Jacob, we would be outside the eternal ark.
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We don't live in Israel. We're not in the dwellings of Jacob. But thanks be to God, that is not the case.
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His kingdom is not limited to the dwellings of Jacob. The kingdom is to all the inhabitants of Zion.
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If you believe in Jesus Christ, you are an inhabitant of Zion. God will not allow, hell contains people from all backgrounds.
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Should not heaven be populated with a variety of people? God will not allow the devil's kingdom to be more diverse than his own.
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Should the devil have people from all nations and not Christ? Absolutely not. God created all men. All men looked to Christ for their salvation.
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God's kingdom will contain people from every world. The devil will not have people from everywhere, and God will not.
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He says, I have my own from every nation, from the east to the west, God will bring his people in.
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Let's look at what the apostle John writes in Revelation chapter seven. He said, after all these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude, which no one could number, of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands.
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So thanks be to God, his kingdom is not as narrow as the dwellings of Jacob. His kingdom is as broad as this world.
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He will have every representative from every person on this planet, every nation on this planet in his kingdom.
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In the Old Testament times, the gates of cities were open during the day, and they were closed at night.
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Why did they do that? To keep the enemies out. You leave the gates open, someone's gonna come in and conquer you. But Revelation 20, 25 says this about the gates of Zion.
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It says, its gates shall not be shut at all by day. There shall be no night there.
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So we hear two things about heaven. The gates are open and there's no night. Heaven's gates are ceremonial gates.
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There's no real function there because all of its citizens are passionately in love with their monarch. There's no evil to keep out.
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There's no devil, there's unregenerate people. The gates are just there to, they're window garnishing. There's no defensive purpose.
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The devil is in hell and all of his demonic horde is down there. There's no more worry about anything tempting us ever again.
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William Gernell made this remark on heaven's gates. He says, heaven fears no devil, therefore its gates are always open.
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We don't have to worry about the devil in heaven. We don't have to worry about sinful man in heaven. We don't have to worry about our lust in heaven because we will be redeemed.
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Nothing can spoil the joy of this church. Christ's bride, and if you believe in Christ, you're all part of Christ's bride.
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We will finally be at peace in the presence of her beloved. The only purpose of these gates is to funnel people, this holy nation, toward the throne of the everlasting lamb.
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That's it, that's the only purpose. There's no defensive purpose anymore. Christ did, when
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Christ was on this earth, he did sojourn in the dwellings of Jacob, but this world was not his home.
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From infinity past to infinity future, where was his home? His home is in heaven, except during his incarnation when he dwelt among us on earth, that's his eternal home as well.
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When he was on this earth, he slept in the homes of others. He had no place of his own. The dwellings of Jacob were only intermittently available to him.
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It seems likely, and again, I can't prove this, but I'm gonna guess that most of the time grass was his most frequent pillow, and the ground was his most used bed.
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We don't hear a lot of times of him staying in a house. Dwellings of Jacob, maybe at one town he'll have someone that house him, but the next town he may be sleeping out in a boat, sleeping outside.
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The sovereign of all the universe, he chose to forgo shelter, why?
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To better broadcast the gospel message. He was not the Pharisees, he didn't live in a big house. He lived outside like a common, actually, he lived worse than a common man, because most common men in Israel had a house, he didn't.
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He had purposed, I'm gonna do my father's will, and my father's names are on my lips. And Jesus was to be sacrificed in view of the earthly Mount Zion to enable his chosen to live where?
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Forever in the heavenly Mount Zion. If you look at Revelation 14 one, you see this, we'll see this again.
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It says, then I looked and behold a lamb standing on Mount Zion with 144 ,000 having his father's name written on their foreheads.
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That's the first verse of Revelation 14. The apostle John was quite familiar with the
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Temple Mount. He could have even been, if you remember the disciples questioned Jesus about when the
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Temple would be destroyed and what would be the sign of Jesus' second coming. It's possible that he was one of those people that said that, we don't really know.
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Church tradition records that Revelation was written somewhere between 85 or 95
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AD. And we know from secular history, when was the Temple burned? 70
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AD. So when John says, I saw a lamb standing on Mount Zion, he's not talking about the rubbish where the
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Temple is. He's talking about the heavenly Zion. Speaking as a New Testament Christian, John now saw that the earthly Temple was merely a foreshadowing of the anti -type of the
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Temple in heaven. Enthroned in heaven, that's where Jesus was when the Temple was destroyed, the earthly Mount Zion was just a footstool for Christ's feet.
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He was in heaven. Jesus now reigns in heaven, surrounded by glorified saints who bore the name of his father.
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What a glorious picture of God's dwelling place. That's why he said, Emmanuel, God with us. Because God didn't just come for us,
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God is also with us. That's the purpose of Messiah. Verse three, in my opinion, if you go back to the chapter, verse three is the crescendo of the first section of this psalm.
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So if you think of like an orchestra or a concert, it works up to a peak. The psalmist works his way from the bottom up as he describes the wonders of heaven.
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So in verse one, we see heaven's foundation. In verse two, we see the gates of heaven.
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And then the final verse focuses on the complete glory of God's eternal home.
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What does it say? It says, glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God. God alone is always worthy of our praise.
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That goes without saying. However, the way we give that praise can vary.
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We can praise God for who he is. We can praise God for what he's done, or we can praise God for the mercies he lavishes on us.
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There's a thousand ways to praise our God. This list is not exhaustive. It's merely illustrative to show you there are different ways you can do it.
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In this verse, the psalmist celebrates God. Why? He says, for the beauty and the wonder of their eternal home.
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One of the ways that ancient kings would demonstrate their power is through what? Magnificent homes and magnificent capital cities.
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King Nebuchadnezzar built the hanging gardens of Babylon. If you're familiar with that, that was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
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Why did he do that? Well, his wife, Queen Amethyst, she missed the lush mountains of her native land. She was from a mountainous area.
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So he built her a man -made mountain just because he loved her so much. This structure showcased the power and splendor of Babylon.
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And as I mentioned before, was one of the ancient world's seven wonders. What Nebuchadnezzar was to Babylon, Solomon was to Jerusalem.
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Solomon was not only the wisest, right? But he was also the richest king in Israel's history. There's a common saying you might've heard, a rising tide lifts all boats.
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And in Solomon's case, his excellence lifted Jerusalem to its zenith or its absolute height during his reign.
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Listen to how Ezra, the scribe, describes the opulence or the wealth of Solomon's capital city.
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He says in Second Chronicles 115, the king made silver and gold as common in Jerusalem as stones.
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And he made cedar trees, which are excellent wood, possibly the best we can get. That was abundant as sycamores, which are in the lowland.
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Solomon made gold and silver commonplace by virtue of his great wealth. Imagine a city where gold and silver are just ordinary things.
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But God will make the same metals ordinary by virtue of his holiness and majesty.
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His holiness and majesty can outshine a city made of solid gold or platinum or diamonds, if you will. Do you think the creator cannot outshine the greatest of his creatures and his city sparkle more than the luster of a million diamonds?
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Absolutely he can. Men sell their souls for gold. But what does Zion use that?
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Zion uses gold as paving bricks for the streets. It's the cheapest, most common thing there. The most precious of earth and metals cannot adequately portray the greatness of our
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God. There's no way. Gold's not precious enough. Neither are diamonds, neither are platinum. In fact, you can put all the precious metals in the world in one big pile, and that's not even close to being a fraction of a percent enough to show the glory of our
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God. No wonder the sons of Korah, they break out in a joyful exclamation. And what do they say?
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They say, oh, city of God, exclamation point, when they meditate on the wonders of God's city.
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This section ends with Selah or a pause in Hebrew. And it actually makes it easier for my outline because it divides the verse up in a separate point.
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So one through three, and then it says Selah or Selah, and then you move into four. I think it's fitting that our section ends here as like, you know, this temporary rest that we have in the
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Psalm, this represents the saint's eternal rest. When we take a momentary break from our lives to come here to worship
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God, the same thing. When we talk of the city of God, it's like there's a temporary rest in the verse, but what about our eternal rest?
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We will live forever with God. We'll never have to strive. We'll never strive with sin. We'll never have fights with fellow
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Christians. We'll no more suffering, no more pain. Shouldn't this temporary pause say, you know what? I'm looking forward to the eternal pause.
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The Lord breaks me away from sin forever. As Christians, I think we should, and I'm guilty of this.
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I don't do this enough in my own life, but we should pause periodically and reflect on the glory of God and our hope of heaven.
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And this hope is not an uncertain hope. It's not, I hope the Bulldogs win. It's not, I hope I'm able to afford a couch next year.
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This is a bold and eager expectation that God will fulfill his promises toward those who that have believed in him.
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When we stop and meditate on our eternal home, we drop the anchor of hope into the rock of God's eternal promises, and we're fastened there.
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And we say, the storms of this life cannot shake me because my anchor is in God. If you're fastened in this way, it's like a ship.
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When a ship is anchored at sea, the storm can beat that ship, but it's not gonna go anywhere. When our anchor of hope is in the promises of God in heaven, we are not gonna be moved although the earth shakes around us.
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The writer of Hebrews uses this exact analogy in chapter six. He uses this way. He says, this hope we have as an anchor of the soul, it's both sure and steadfast.
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So it's sure and it's steadfast, and it enters in the presence beyond the veil. Like I can't go beyond the veil of death, and I can't see what's behind there.
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None of us can. We can even go once, but Christ can. And if your hope is in Christ, you know what's beyond the veil.
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Finally, God does not merely dwell with us. He is also for us. So my final point in verse four is the
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Christian's home are God for us. The Christian's home, God for us.
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Verse four says this. It says, I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon to those who know me.
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Behold of Philistia and Tyreth, Ethiopia. This one was born there. After seeing
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God's earthly dwelling in the first three verses we finally moved to the believer's heavenly home. So it's right to talk about God's dwelling first and then where we're gonna live because God is the ultimate end of all things.
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The ultimate goal of our life is to glorify God and secondary goal to enjoy him forever or the ultimate goal. But both of these phases are really transitory.
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The true, I'm sorry, God's temporary residence in the Hebrew temples merely is our earthly residence in our bodily temple.
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So God was in the temple for a short time. We're in these temples for a short time but this is not where we're gonna stay. We're gonna be in heaven.
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Thus the main point of verse four is obtaining heaven. And the only way we can attain heaven is through what?
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Is through God's great love for us. That's it, the only way. God is for his saints. I love, I got this from R .C.
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Sproul. He said, deus pro nobis, God is for us. He is for us.
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He doesn't just love us, he's for us. The light of God in heaven, it drives away physical darkness and no spiritual darkness can ever enter there.
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Neither of those things can be there. This is the believer's great hope. There is emotional progression in this verse.
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If you look at this verse, it starts with mentioning Rahab in Babylon to the interjection behold.
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The Holy Spirit inspired this abrupt interjection to ensure that the reader pay attention to what?
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The words that follow. So when you say behold, you must pay attention. What comes immediately after? Speaking in the spirit, the psalmist lists the many nations that surround the nation of Israel.
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He imagines God having a conversation with Israel's enemies and praising the excellencies of his chosen people.
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Egypt or Rahab lay southeast of Israel. No Israelite could forget the 400 years of slavery.
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They all remember that. That was passed down in oral tradition. It was in the Bible. They had suffered for a long time in that land.
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Babylon or modern day Iraq lay east of Israel, right? Nebuchadnezzar's army would actually sack and burn
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Jerusalem in 592 BC. So in a couple hundred years. Philistia was a narrow kingdom that lay westward wedged between the
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Mediterranean Sea and Israel. Though very small, if you read the Old Testament, they were
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Israel's bitterest enemy from the time of the judges onward. The Gaza Strip is the modern counterpart to this kingdom.
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So you see today there's still, the Philistines and the Israelites are still at it. Nothing stopped. Tyre was a prosperous seaport situated on Israel's northern border.
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This town is in modern day Lebanon, but the Bible does not record any direct warfare with Israel and Lebanon.
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Tyre was hardly a close ally. Finally, Ethiopia lay south of Israel and west of Egypt.
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If you remember the Queen of Sheba who came to visit Solomon, the Queen of Sheba was an Ethiopian ruler who came to Jerusalem to hear
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Solomon's wisdom. When God selected Israel, he really chose the most insignificant and weakest nation in the ancient
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Middle East. Other nations, they envied and respected Israel. Why? Because they were strong, because they were powerful, because they were smart.
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No, they respected Israel because of their relationship with God. That's what made the other nations concerned.
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That's why Rahab said, we were scared of you because of your God. Nations envy Israel because of their God, not because they were strong.
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And for those of us that are parents, parents are proud of their children, regardless of whether they accomplished ordinary things or great things.
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In the same way, God delights in his saints. His delight is not, this person has done what the world says is great things.
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This person has been faithful in a small area. God delights in them no matter what they do, because they are his saints. This is the same thing we see in the text.
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Israel lacked the wisdom of Egypt. Israel was not even close to being as smart as the Egyptians were. They were one of the first, you know, really important kingdoms in the old world.
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They were not as powerful as Babylon. Babylon had incredibly powerful armies. Israel could not match it up.
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Their army could not compare to the Philistines' modern force. If you read the Old Testament, the
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Philistines had iron implements. They had iron weapons and shields and stuff. The Israelites were running around with a bunch of farmers.
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They had rakes and scythes, and I think only Jonathan and Saul actually had modern weapons. They didn't have their natural riches of Ethiopia.
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Ethiopia is a very rich country. Gold, silver, spices, they didn't have that. They didn't have the exotic goods of Tyre.
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Tyre was a rich seaport. Israel had none of these things. Yet, without these advantages, Israel had still been chosen as a special object of God's love.
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Even the accusation of the devil against the saints cannot dim God's love for them. If we read
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Zechariah three, you want to turn to verses one through five, we'll see an example of that here.
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In Zechariah three, it says, then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the
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Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the Lord said to Satan, the
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Lord rebuke you, O Satan. The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you. Is this not a brand plucked from the fire?
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So you see Jesus here talking with the devil. Well, actually, I'm not sure about that one, but you see he's saying, is this not a brand plucked from the fire?
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Now, Joshua the high priest was standing before the angel, clothed in filthy garments. He had filthy garments on.
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And the angel said to those who were standing before him, remove the filthy garments from him. And he said to him, behold,
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I have taken away your iniquity, and I will clothe you with pure vestments. And they said, put a clean turban on his head.
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So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with garments. And the angel of the Lord was standing by.
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Notice here that the Lord choosing Jerusalem is very closely linked with his defense of Joshua the high priest.
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God defends his people both individually and corporately as a church from the evil forces that threaten us.
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So God doesn't just protect you, he protects his church. God knows our frame is weak. He knows our indwelling sin is active.
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He also knows our love is a flickering flame. Any puff of wind can cause our faith to kind of sputter or go out.
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Our righteousness cannot suffice. So Christ gave us his own righteousness.
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The devil, when the devil comes to you, he points out your sin. When God comes to you, he says this one was born in Zion.
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That one was born in Zion. That's what God says when he sees the saints. He doesn't see a sinner dressed in filthy robes.
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He sees the perfect, spotless righteousness of Christ. And he sees a citizen of Zion when he looks at his saints.
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When the world mocks our weakness, Christ defends us with heaven's strength.
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Our heavenly citizenship, it has two main functions. It's a bomb for our soul, and it's a barricade to Satan's schemes.
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And we see that in this verse. It's a bomb to our soul because when Satan accuses us, the Lord says, no, you are a Zion citizen.
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And when the devil says, look at his filthy robes, he's a wicked sinner. God says, put the perfect righteousness of Christ on him because this is
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Zion citizen. The early Christian church was not like the church today. They lacked status.
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They lacked prestige. Most early Christians were slaves, women, poor people, and non -Romans.
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There were not a lot of important people in the early church. But you know what? Those are, and guess what? Those classes of people, ancient
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Rome looked down on all of them. If you were a slave or a woman or a non -Roman or a poor people, you were worthless to the
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Roman economy. But those are the exact people that God chose to bless and say, you are my kingdom.
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I don't want the rich. I don't want the emperors. I don't want the senators. I want you. Paul alludes to this.
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And you know, what did the Lord do? He took these people and he redeemed them and made us trophies of Christ's free grace.
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Paul says this in 1 Corinthians. Let's look at verses 26 to 29. He says, for you see, you're calling brethren that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called.
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Why is that? Why did God not call many mighty or noble? Because God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise.
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God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty. And the base things of the world, the things that are on the ground that people step on, that people don't care about,
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God has chosen those things which are not, which are nothing, which are like non -existent to bring to nothing the things that are.
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Why did God do all this? 1 Corinthians says that no flesh should glory in his presence.
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There will be no glory in Zion. The citizens of Zion are there because God brought them there. They're not there because they're noble.
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They're not there because they're mighty. They're there because they're sinful and because God is a savior who lavishes free grace.
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That's it. That's the only reason we're there. No flesh will glory in the presence of God. No nation will glory in the presence of God.
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Ancient Israel, they have pride in their ethnicity. They have pride in their tradition. They have pride in their temple.
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What did those things lead ancient Israel to do? Those things led ancient Israel to put the
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Lord of glory on a cross. They would rather have them. Where are they today? Where is their pride in their ethnicity?
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Where is their temple? Where is their tradition? The Jewish rejection of Christ, as bad as that was, that led to greater wealth for us.
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We're all Gentiles. Unless I missed something here, none of us are Jews. So their rejection led to riches for us.
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Some commentators see this verse as a prophecy of the gospel going forward to the Gentiles, and I kind of agree.
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I will make mention of those who know me. If you read Matthew Kuhl, he says this on this verse.
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He says, that know me truly, clearly, affectionately, and practically so as to love, serve, and obey me.
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This phrase is frequently used in scriptures in this manner. On this account, not only heathens, but wicked
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Israelites are said to not know God in 1 Samuel 2, 12, and elsewhere. So we see in here both
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God making much of his people, and we also see God saying, I'm gonna have people from all these nations. I'm gonna save some
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Egyptians. I'm gonna save some Philistines. I'm gonna save some Ethiopians. A Philistine who truly knows
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Christ, if you are a modern day person living in the Gaza Strip, and you know Christ, you have much more.
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You have great overwhelming advantage over a Jew who's born in Bethlehem. Good night. You could be born in Jerusalem for that matter.
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But if you know Christ, Christ doesn't distinguish between Philistine and Jew because he has people from all tribes and tongues.
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And the thing is, if you were a citizen of Zion, you trust in Christ. It's not you're born in Israel. If God knows you, you are assured of eternal bliss.
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If he does not, then your death will usher you into a place of unending terrors. My plea to you today is do not put the issue of your salvation off until tomorrow.
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The Bible says today is a day of repentance. Tomorrow is too late. You may be here one minute and thrust into eternity the next.
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We've seen this in the news this week. You think at 32 you're gonna live forever? You're not. I could die tomorrow.
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We are not guaranteed tomorrow. If you don't trust Christ, please today do that. And you will be a citizen of Zion.
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Many of the ancient Jews, what did they do? They prided themselves. They said, I'm in God's chosen people. Guess what awakened those self delusions?
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They woke up in eternal torment. That was their reward for rejecting Christ. Don't let that be true of you today.
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Please flee to Christ today and ask Christ. Say, Lord, I want your spotless robes of perfect righteousness.
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That's what I want from you. Nothing more, nothing less. I need your spotless robes. As Joshua the high priest was stood there in dirty robes, say,
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Lord, I'm like Joshua the high priest. I need your robes today. God died for each citizen of heaven, and he will not return until the very last citizen of heaven is brought into the fold.
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That's when Christ will return. He won't return when the red heifer is found or when the temple is revealed. He will return when the last citizen of Zion puts his or her trust in Christ, and then the end will come.
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If you are a believer today, then rest assured in this. No one can ever strip away your heavenly citizenship.
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God would have to cease being God before he could lose a single one of his elect, and we know that's not gonna happen.
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God is with us in this world, and he's with us for what? All eternity. The temple in Jerusalem was just a faint shadow of our glorious home.
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Do you know, have you ever thought about why saints' deaths are precious in the sight of the Lord? Why does it say the death of the saint is precious in God's sight?
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That's an interesting thing to say. It's not because God loves death. Actually, Jesus wept over it and its effects when
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Lazarus died, and the effects of the fall grieve the Father's heart. The reason God loves the death of the saints is because death is a homecoming for the believer.
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We'll finally get to see God face to face. That's why God loves it, because he's coming home. If you think about when
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Stephen was stoned, we had a preacher preach on this at the conference I went to last week. I didn't hear this in this room, but I heard this before.
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You notice when Stephen was stoned, he said, I see the heavens open, and I see God the Father, and I see Jesus standing at his right hand.
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And I heard a pastor back in the day say, why is Jesus standing at the right hand of God? Nowhere else in the scripture says
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Jesus stands. He's sitting, he's seated, he's ruling. I'm not, you know,
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I'm not inerrant, and neither is the guy that I heard say this, but I do agree with this. The reason Jesus is standing is because he's standing to receive a citizen of Zion.
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Because Stephen is coming into heaven, and he said, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And I believe Jesus stood up to receive his spirit.
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That's how much Jesus loves his saints. He said, that's my saint, I'm gonna stand up to watch. You think about when something interesting goes on, people don't sit down, they stand up.
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And Christ is like, he saw that, he loves his saints, he loves his martyrs, and he said, I'm standing up to receive his spirit.
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You better believe when Stephen said, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit, Jesus took that request seriously, because Stephen was a citizen of Zion.
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Now we see in part, but then we'll see God face to face. Faith will pass away, we won't have faith in heaven.
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We're gonna have a clear sight of God's holiness and beauty. This hope should really thrill your soul, and it should strengthen your legs for the rest of your earthly race.
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Because that is our hope, we will see God as we see him, we will see God as we see each other now. We won't fully understand
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God, we will never fully comprehend God, he's God and we are not. But we will see God like we see each other, we won't need faith anymore.
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And that is a thing, faith is a temporary thing for this earth, we are longing for the day when our faith becomes sight, when we get to see
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God face to face as he sees us. That's the hope of the believer. And that is the mark of a citizen of Zion.
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Please pray with me. Dear Lord, I thank you for these words from the
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Psalms. Lord, the Psalms are, Lord, they're the songbook of the church, the ancient church, and Lord, the modern church.
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We still sing these Psalms because they're great hymns and great compositions to the glory of your name.
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Lord, we pray that we would all, Lord, live like citizens of Zion, that we would seek, we know that, Lord, you are with us,
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God is with us, and we know that you are for us. We pray that we would press on and that we would seek the heavenly home that you've laid before us.
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We pray that we would not fall back, we would not get weak, we would trust in you and set our eyes fixed on your throne and say, that is my ultimate goal.
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We thank you for this day, we thank you for everything you've given us. Please bless us as we go forth from this place and keep us safe till we assemble next week.